Strategic Hamlet Program

The Strategic Hamlet Program was a plan by the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War to combat the communist insurgency by pacifying the countryside and reducing the influence of the communists among the rural population. In 1962, the South Vietnamese government began the implementation of the program with advice and financing from the USA. The strategy was to isolate the rural people from contact with and influence from the Viet Cong, and rural peasants were provided with protection, economic support, and aid by the government, which formed new communities of protected hamlets to protect the rural people. The plan was a failure, alienating more rural Vietnamese than it helped and contributing to the growth in the influence of the Viet Cong. After Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in a November 1963 coup, the program was cancelled, and the USA decided to intervene in Vietnam with airstrikes and ground troops instead of directing the South Vietnamese military.